Where artifice ends and the heavens begin, a median that has existed as long as civilization and art. It is where the beauty and the desolation can be seen in contrast, a silent conflict rising with the feathers of falcons and pigeons. There are ghosts there too, remnants of the tragedies that linger in the morning shadows. My heart will always be there, in those silent and shaded bowers.

I wasn't the same Alain that I once was. The city wasn't the same, even when I had found the eerie landscape and forgotten vantages. I had an eye for it, but my finger on my camera was no longer attuned to the illumination that had given my name meaning.

I spent most of my time ascending and looking from the vistas of the rooftops. I held my camera and looked through the antique eye at a district that was not always seen. There were hidden angles, mirages, and glimmers of what the heart of the city once was. That is what I was seeking, the art and emotion, the colors and the phantom of light as it played for just one flash across the broken glass and ashen facades. I wanted to be there, clicking the shutter at the precise moment that the light arrived, when things were beautiful. Always, the moment was too brief, I could never click fast enough, as the gray ruins reverted to their dying vigil.

I would sigh, for in the past I was younger and had a different perception. I used to be able to capture the moment. I was not touched by the age of the city, I was vibrant and I drew life into my film. My earlier career was charmed and granted me the status of a successful artist.

Time had crept up on me and taken its revenge. I had stolen those moments, those brief flickers between the measurable seconds when the light was eternal. I had taken and captured in my images what belonged to the ghosts, to the ones who had known the streets and windows when they were whole and new. As a photographer whose career had aged and withered, I knew what I had done and I could no longer replicate my passions from my youth.

I descended as the day ended. There really was no point in sunset photography. The truth was in the first rays of sunshine. The fading fire was the darkness that anyone could see at any time. It meant nothing to me.

At my studio, I found my answering machine had recorded a cryptic message. An acquaintance who had found something intangible yet moving in my earlier art. Miriam was a crisis counselor with the police department. Her message was vague, saying that she needed help with something I was familiar with, dealing with a repeating phenomenon. It was hard to ignore her offer to compensate me for my time, I had overdue rent to pay. I called her back on the cell number she had added after her number at her office. Reaching me was important enough to leave both numbers.

"I'm sorry to call you at home. You sounded like it is urgent, and I do need the money. What can I help you with, Miriam?" I said over the phone. I listened while she soberly told me she didn't believe in ghosts, but that she thought if ever someone could solve her problem, it would be someone like me.

"Ghosts?" I asked. I felt a chill. It is hard to disregard something you've spent your life looking at, even through the glass.

"We've had calls from the heart of the city, twice now, where there was a potential jumper. When I arrived, I found someone there, waiting. Someone unresponsive, unidentified, and when I went, they were gone. No bodies, nothing. It has happened before, many times, but these last two times I was there. They just vanished." Miriam sounded hesitant, but she had committed to recruiting my help and had to explain why.

I felt a coldness in my stomach, a reaction I get when I am looking at something that disappears a few seconds later, or when I lower the viewfinder and the glass, my naked eye sees nothing. I knew it was possible to see something and to watch it disappear. I had not succeeded in capturing such an image in a very long time. While I felt dread at the thought of chasing a ghost, my heart also quickened, for if I took such a picture, the spell on me would be broken. I would be like I was in my past, someone who could take such pictures, with a finger and eye quick enough to escape the dying world.

"From the rooftop?" I asked. I heard my own voice, a mixture of apprehension and excitement. This was already about more than just some money.

"The Fassen building. He was there three nights in a row. The last two times I was there, and I saw him go. But there were no remains. Nobody was there." Miriam reiterated her earlier statement.

"Who is making the report?" I asked.

"I can't tell you that." Miriam said quickly. Then she added, "But the call came from across the street, where there are some new tenants."

"On the west side? At sunset?" I asked.

"Yes." Miriam agreed. "You seem to know what you are doing. If you can get a picture, we could identify whoever is doing this. Perhaps it is someone who needs my help." Miriam sounded doubtful.

"I take it you must be there, then." I worried. I worked better alone, and if she was there I might not be able to enter that magic moment when things were clear.

"I must follow protocol. You are a consultant, not an investigator." Miriam decreed. I sighed and agreed to meet her later, giving her my address so she could pick me up.

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When she arrived she called me down from her cellphone and I met her on the empty windswept street. The chill of autumn wasn't what froze my blood. I knew it was a night when things could be seen. I felt somewhat worried we would actually encounter whatever she thought was a jumper, and that I would not want to be involved. My premonitions kept me standing there as some leaves rustled thickly along the sidewalk and I looked into the darkness of her car, seeing my reflection as the streetlight overhead flickered on.

We parked next to a damaged old meter in front of the abandoned Fassen building. Miriam was younger and more professional that I remembered her from my gallery. She had seemed older and more carefree when I had met her. She had a flashlight and I had my camera. There was police tape over the broken door to the building, where boards were removed so she and the officers from the nights before could enter.

We went up the creaking stairs and I asked her:

"Did it happen at the same time each night?"

"We have few minutes to spare before the time when the calls came in." She spoke softly, adopting her counselor's voice. She sounded confident and compassionate, a practiced tone.

As we climbed the stairs I felt a foreboding and I questioned my decision. I did need the money and I might just capture a ghost on film. But there was a sense of wrongness and dread that I could not escape. It was as though the walls were pressing in on me, infusing me with their decrepitude and that the ghost would do the same. If I saw it, I would know the frailty of life and I would forget my pursuit of accomplishments. It was a feeling like I was putting myself into flames - no - into ice. It was a burning coldness, as we neared the rooftop.

"Do you feel that?" I stopped and asked her. Miriam was leading the way with her flashlight and she stopped and said, without turning:

"I think so. I don't like this, it isn't like helping someone. It is something else. Like I am interfering. Like I am forcing myself to go where I am in some kind of terrible danger." She was honest with me. I appreciated it and I said:

"Thank you. I didn't know how to explain this."

We stood on the rooftop and it was unnaturally cold. There was stillness, and although we were both bundled up in coats and there was no wind, the cold was penetrating and seemed to be inside, not just around us. Miriam didn't need to point. I was already looking where she was looking. I somehow knew the exact place where the man would be.

And then, as though he were already there, coming into focus, the shadows and the place that he was now had him there. It is hard to explain, how someone who wasn't there can just appear. I held up my camera and began to 'click-click' away.

Miriam was addressing him, but he was indifferent to our presence and didn't respond to her attempts to plead with him. I shuddered, realizing this was not a person. I decided it must be some kind of entity, as I could see it in my mind, as well as in my view. The ghost's eyes were hollow and the sound of my camera seemed to echo helplessly.

I tried to collect the photographic evidence I was hired to take, but my hands were shaking and I couldn't seem to get a clear shot, even though it was right in front of us. Like Miriam's words passing through it without effect, it was intangible to the mechanism and chemicals of my photography.

When it reenacted its doom we both shuffled to the edge, without wanting to look, we did. There was nothing down there. He had leapt and vanished.

"That's it?" I asked Miriam. She said nothing, but the disturbed and frightened look in her eyes spoke to me. I felt the same horror.

In the morning she came and got me, asking me simply: "Do you want to come with me? I am going to find out who he was."

I had a picture of him, but it was blurry, showing only a shadow. When I stared at it long enough I could see him in it. I showed it to her and asked her if she could see him there too.

"I don't need that. I see him whenever I close my eyes."

Miriam took me to where the old police records were kept, most of them never filed digitally, as they were not relevant anymore. We sorted through a stack until we had just a few that pertained to the Fassen building.

"This is it." Miriam showed me an old black and white photograph from a newspaper that showed the same man we had seen. "His name was William."

There was in investigation into William that had briefly preceded his suicide. He was the main suspect into the killing of a gallery owner, a death that was highly suspicious, unlikely to be accidental.

Two nights before William had jumped he was the last person seen with the victim, who had fallen backwards and hit his head and died. The police had searched for William to question him, and when they had found him, he had already jumped.

There were other newspaper articles in the case file. They were collected as evidence of motive. William, a once exceptional painter, had faced rejection and mockery from the art community. Critics had slandered him - shattered his dreams, and left his soul tormented.

His pain had turned towards anger for the gallery owner who suddenly refused to display William's new work. In an argument, I considered, William had somehow shoved or hit the victim, resulting in the accidental-looking death. Consumed by guilt at having caused the other man's death, William had taken his own life.

Miriam and I had sat there all day searching and reading and discussing what seemed to be the obvious story about William's origins as a ghost. While we were there, Miriam was called out to the Fassen building again. We returned and she ascended with the police. I stayed below, looking up to see the ghost perched and ready to jump.

Several people were outside their apartments across the street, looking up. I aimed my camera and managed to see the despair and desperation, even in the darkness. Somehow with just one click, I knew I had captured the image, telling the truth of who William was in those last moments.

As we waited below, Miriam spoke to him from the rooftop. She knew his name and why he had jumped, and the ghost responded. We had overcome our fear of it, and something had changed. He never jumped. Instead, at that moment, my camera found the light.

I processed the film and looked at it for a long time. My eyes watered, as I saw that the horror was at an end. In my picture I had caught the exact moment, as the darkened image of the man had turned radiant, released from his unending death.

There was no ghost in the picture I took, just a flash of light at the top of the building. I had seen many such moments earlier in my career and I knew what I was looking at. I recognized it as the release from the dying darkness, the moment everything turned bright. It was that imprinted memory on all things, that brief moment in all the despair when hope can be seen. While it is not always visible, it is always there.

Anywhere, if you look for it.